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Talk:You Are Not Alone/@comment-24712996-20140515002449
Two high school football players accused in the Steubenville, Ohio rape trial were found guilty on all counts of the charges. The suspects convicted were both star players on their high school football team who were hailed as heroes. The victim was a 16 year old girl who claimed that she was unconscious when the horrific attack took place. She was at a party and like so many young people had a bit too much to drink and blacked out. When she gained consciousness she had no recollection of the previous night’s events and learned of what happened to her through social media and text messages. Pictures of her in the nude circulated and the boys bragged about how far they got with girl *excuse me while I throw up* The accusations against the victim were that she was drunk and has a crush on one of her attackers to somehow justify their behaviour. Let’s back up here one moment people. We need to get a few things straight. Firstly, non-consensual sex is rape. It doesn’t matter if she is drunk. It's still rape. She could be a prostitute, or a wife, or asleep. It's still rape. Secondly, I don’t care if you’re the cutest freaking guy on earth, if a girl doesn’t consent then you don’t have the right to touch her. Like EVER. As a culture we still refuse to accept that most rapes are committed by ordinary men, men who have friends and families, and men who may have achieved greatness. Part of the reason we haven’t accepted it is that it’s far easier to keep on believing that only evil men lurking in dark alley ways commit these crimes. Most of the time the attacker is someone the victim knows – a friend, a boyfriend, her friends boyfriend, the guy who works at the coffee shop, the guy in her class or in this case prized football players. Unfortunately the heroes’ worship of these despicable young men is still continuing which disgusts me to my core. In many of the articles and news reports I’ve seen the focus seems to be on how this verdict will affect these boys’ lives and how tragic it is that ''their''lives will never be the same again. Are you being serious?! No one mentions the victim and how this experience will impact her for years to come and how she has to deal with this for the rest of her life but I’m meant to feel sorry for the attackers who put her through this?! The poor girl has received death threats since her name was revealed - we need to look at ourselves a society and see what kind of message we are sending out here. The descriptions of the victim’s state during the attack included: ‘She wasn’t talking.” “She wasn’t participating or moving”. Er, if your sexual partner’s reaction to you is non responsive then you need to back the fuck away man. There is no excuse for that type of behaviour and she obviously isn’t in the right state of mind to indulge your 50 shades of Grey fantasy. My heart ached when I read that the victim felt that she would be blamed for her ordeal. Unfortunately, rape is very common. The rape conviction rate in the UK stands at a shocking low 6 per cent, and with up to 95 per cent of victims not reporting attacks at all and even higher in America. The main reason for not talking about such assaults was that they felt ashamed or embarrassed, but almost half did not report the assault because they thought they would be blamed for what had happened to them. The idea that raping a woman after a previous instance of consensual sex is just “bad bedroom etiquette” (I’m talking about you George Galloway) justifies the behaviour of the attacker and puts the blame on the victim. It makes any man or woman who has ever been raped feel that it’s their entire fault. I’ve had enough of this victim blaming. We should be telling our sons not to attack instead of telling our daughters how to prevent being victims of these vicious attacks. There is another contributing factor that no one ever talks about because it makes people uncomfortable but it needs to be discussed. The assault is symbolic of an era where hard-core porn is easily accessible on the internet to these young men whose generation grew up with it. Most porn is made with the male gaze in mind as the men are always in positions of control and domineering while the woman is passive and helpless. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t watch porn because to be honest I couldn’t give a toss about what you do as long as it doesn’t involve me. I’m not implying that porn is the reason that rape happens but the narrative of porn itself- a young woman who is is treated as an object whose needs are secondary- is dangerous because this is accessible to most boys and they see this as how a sexual relationship should be. It isn’t and we need to address this. The terrifying thing is that one of the young men claimed that he didn’t know what rape meant. We have to educate girls AND boys to stop this happening. I’m going to be honest, when I first read about this case, I cried for the victim who will be traumatized for years over something that is not her fault. And I cried because of the lack of shame and disgust that the boys, the witnesses, and even the lawyers at times showed towards this case and the victim. There is no excuse for their behaviour whatsoever. I only hope people remember Steubenville and take it as an example of why we need to educate and do something about how rape culture is seen among young men. My thoughts are with the girl, these types of experiences take a long time to heal from but hopefully after this sentencing she’s found some peace and knows she is not alone, and I hope Degrassi sends out the same message to all victims.